2020 Part 1: Pandemic Wars

Posted on May 26, 2022 by Mike

Life in 2020 after Covid-19. Continue reading →

The Worst Year Ever?: The virus seemed to appear in or around Wuhan, China, in late 2019. It appeared to be extremely contagious. It was given the name COVID-19¹ on February 11, 2020. In the past such scares (SARS and Ebola) had pretty much bypassed the West, but within two weeks Italy had become a global hotspot. China, South Korea, and New Zealand fought the disease relentlessly, and had very good results. If all other countries had done the same, the disease probably would have run its course in a few months. However, because in many cases the disease had mild or even undetectable symptoms, many people did not take it seriously and were scornful of those who did.

Editorial note: I have decided to capitalize Pandemic as a sign of respect. There have been other pandemics in my lifetime, but Covid-19 was the only one that had a significant effect on the U.S.

Cases began appearing in the U.S. in early February. The first death was reported in the state of Washington on the 29^th. On March 11 the World Health Organization declared it a pandemic. Two days later the Trump administration declared a national emergency and issued a travel ban from 26 non-European countries. However, the ban only applied to people who were not U.S. citizens. Need I add that this was an election year?

On Sunday March 15 Felix Springer and I played in a STaC game at the Hartford Bridge Club. The talk that day was largely about Colorado Springs, where a woman who had played in a sectional tournament may have been a super-spreader. She competed in the Bridge Center there in six events between February 27 and March 3. She died on March 13.

I later learned that Fred Gagnon had played in the same tournament, but he never was at the same table with her. Before the Pandemic struck Fred played both in Simsbury and Hartford and frequently partnered with my wife Sue. Details about the Colorado Springs incident can be found here.

New York and its suburbs were hit hard very early. While attending a large gathering at a synagogue in Rob and Laura Petrie’s hometown of New Rochelle, a man who had recently been abroad passed the disease on to many people, including the rabbi. At one time 108 of the state’s 173 cases were in Westchester County, which borders on Connecticut.

My notes about the bridge game at the HBC on March 15 record that despite some mistakes Felix and I won.² I remember that one woman who played that day wore a medical mask of some sort. We already knew that the club would be closed indefinitely after the game. Felix and I were the last two to leave the Bridge Center. He was responsible for locking up after we left. At the last minute I dashed over to the shelves that contained non-bridge books and selected Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz³ and Fatherland by Robert Harris. Both books resided in my house for much longer than I had planned, but I did eventually return them.

Sue and I had signed up for a bridge cruise on the Danube River with the famous expert, Larry Cohen. We were scheduled to leave on March 17. That cruise never happened. The details of the story are provided here.

Responding to the Pandemic: Although President Trump had declared a state of emergency, he, like most Republicans, absolutely refused to take the disease seriously. He made it clear that masks were not mandatory, and he refused to wear one. He then proceeded to make an utter ass of himself whenever he tried to talk about the Pandemic. He even predicted an “Easter miracle” that absolutely did not happen. Despite the fact that it was obviously an irresponsible if not evil idea, he actually encouraged everyone to go to church on that day.

Not only did this laissez-faire approach probably cost him the election; it also cost the country several hundred thousand lives. The Center for Disease Control also fumbled the ball. For some reason they refused to accept the test that had been developed by the World Health Organization, and their own test proved unreliable. So, for months as the virus spread geometrically throughout the country, the U.S. had no test. Soon the situation was much worse in America than anywhere else in the world.

To be fair Trump did direct more than a billion dollars to a virtually unknown company named BioNTech to develop a vaccine using mRNA technology. Others also were funded, but BioNTech received the biggest prize because its leaders claimed that with proper funding they could produce a new vaccine in a few months. Their effort was dubbed Project Lightspeed. Obviously Trump hoped that they would deliver by election day, but they missed by a few weeks. In fact, Pfizer, which did not participate, developed and tested a similar vaccine a little sooner, and the Chinese were already using a somewhat inferior vaccine by then.

Although most people who contracted the initial virus recovered after a week or so, the aged and those with comorbidities did not fare as well. The death rate in 2020 was over 3 percent. Nursing homes throughout the country often experienced horrendous situations. Hundreds of thousands of people died needlessly.

Of course, many people still had to work, but most of us hunkered down and stayed in our houses. We had to learn to order groceries—and anything else that we needed—online. I wrote a little program to allow members of the Simsbury Bridge Club to send me descriptions and/or pictures of their new lifestyle. I then posted them on a webpage that anyone could view. A few people sent responses, and I promptly posted them. You can view them here.

Reading: I also posted quite a few entries about my own life. I took advantage of the extra free time to read more. By June 28 I had read nine novels: The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, Magpie Murders, Fatherland, Supermarket by Bobby Hall, Moriarity by Anthony Horowitz, Two for Texas by James Lee Burke, The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz, The Brothers K by David James Duncan, and Wayfaring Stranger by James Lee Burke. Supermarket, which I bought at a rare venture to the Target store, was awful. The others were all pretty good. The Enfield Public Library was closed. I purchased several books from Powell’s in Portland, OR. It took them almost a month for them to send them, but their selection of new and used volumes was outstanding.

What I especially liked about Powell’s was the number of books by Jack Vance that were offered for sale. I found some listed there that I had never seen in a library or bookstore, including the one that won an Edgar award for him, The Man in a Cage.

One of the last books that I later ordered from Powell’s was Jack Vance’s autobiography. Because I like a challenge—especially when I had an enormous amount of time on my hands—I selected the version in Italian, Ciao Sono Jack Vance! (E Questa Storia Sono Io). Vance has always been one of my favorite authors, and his last book was certainly one of his best. What a life he led! He managed to finish the book even though he was in poor health and nearly blind. He had to dictate the entire volume.

I was so inspired by this book that I decided to undertake this set of blog entries, which I later labeled The 1948 Project. The details surrounding its genesis have been recorded here.

Most aspects of life were put on hold in the spring and summer of 2020. The American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) canceled all three of its national tournaments and prohibited its units and districts from holding tournaments for the rest of the year. The National Debate Tournament was also canceled. Hollywood closed shop.

Most schools attempted to reopen in the fall, but the result was a huge spike in the number of cases of COVID-19. The election was held in November, of course, but a very large number of people voted by mail rather than in person.

I walked southwest on North St. until it ended at Hazard Ave. (190). I turned left and walked west to Park St. Then a left on Elm St. I walked past Carris Reels to School St. and then north back to North St.

Exercise: I also exercised more during the lockdown. I was walking 35-40 miles per week, outside if the weather was tolerable, and on the treadmill when it wasn’t. On May 2 and a few other occasions I walked ten miles outside.

Later in the summer, however, I could no longer walk more than a mile or two without a pain gradually developing in the top of my right foot. This condition, which caused me to limp, bothered me throughout the year. I still walked, but I had to stop and stretch my IT band for a couple of minutes. Sometimes I would need to perform this ritual two or three times in a 2.5 mile lap. I often stopped after one lap. However, when I walked on the treadmill it hurt a lot less.

Therefore, I began to walk indoors more frequently. On my convertible laptop computer, a Lenovo model called Yoga, I watched many operas from the Metropolitan Opera’s streaming service that were new to me, including Ghosts of Versailles, La Wally, Orphée et Eurydice and many operas by Massenet and Bellini. I was really impressed by performances by Natalie Dessay, Teresa Stratas, and Marilyn Horn. The most bizarre moment occurred when Renée Fleming appeared in Rossini’s Armida. In a tender moment she rubbed cheeks with tenor Lawrence Brownlee, who happened to be black. When they parted more than a square inch of his brown makeup remained on her cheek.

I also watched operas on YouTube while I was walking on the treadmill. The quality was a little spotty—both the performances and the recordings. However, this introduced me to several of the more neglected operas, some of which were delightful.

The best thing about the YouTube operas was that I was able to make MP3 files of them using a piece of free downloadable software called MP3Studio. I had already made MP3 files out of my opera CD’s and downloaded them to a small MP3 player that I had purchased at Best Buy.⁴ I added quite a few operas from YouTube. My favorite was Tchaikovsky’s Cherevichki. I liked it so much that I purchased a DVD of its performance at Covent Garden in London.

I also downloaded hundreds of great rock and roll songs of the sixties and seventies. I could scarcely believe that most of the best songs from Bob Dylan, the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones were now available for free.

When I walked around the neighborhood I listened to music on the tiny MP3 play. In the cold weather I used my Bose headphones. When it was warmer I used ear buds.

My new and improved arch supports. The one on the right is inside-out.

Toward the end of the year I misplaced one of the arch supports that I had purchased from Walmart before the Pandemic. These were springy pieces of metal (I think) that were inserted into bands that wrapped around the foot and were secured by Velcro. I bought new ones at the same store that were spongy balls in elastic bands. They cost $10.

After I had used the new ones for about a month, the pain in my foot ceased, and I could walk five miles without stopping. I understand that post hoc ergo propter hoc is a famous fallacy, but I did not even consider reverting to the original pair when I discovered the hiding place of the lost arch support.

The Montalbano crew stayed together through all thirty-seven episodes.

I don’t remember how I heard about it, but on November 2 I subscribed (for only 8$ per month!) to a streaming service called MHz Choice. It had all thirty-seven of the Commissario Montalbano movies that I had learned about in 2016 in Sicily⁵ as well as dozens of other European mysteries and other offerings. All of them were captioned in English. I started with Montalbano (and a prequel called Young Montalbano), but I soon found many other shows that I enjoyed tremendously. There were also a few mysteries on YouTube, including the entire set of Inspector Morse shows.

During one of my walks around the neighborhood a bizarre event occurred. Just after I reached my house a car pulled into the driveway. It was driven by a man carrying three large cheese pizzas from Liberty Pizza. Evidently my phone, which was securely in my pocket, had somehow activated the Slice app to order the pizzas while I was walking. I was billed for them, but the charge was eventually removed from my credit card account after I complained about it.

On August 4 there was a tornado watch. A branch fell and damaged our gutter. A very large branch fell from a tree near the house on 10 Park St. It landed on and crushed a pickup truck that had been parked nearby. A week or more was required to clean it up. I don’t know what became of the truck.

Translation: In desperate need of a project to occupy my mind during the day, I decided in June to translate one of my travel journals into Italian. My Italian teacher, Mary Trichilo (TREE key low) agreed to read my efforts and to provide suggestions. I chose our 2005 Rick Steves trip to Italy that was billed as the Village Italy Tour.⁵ It was the first one on which the Corcorans joined us, and the first one for my first digital camera.

Reliving that experience was great fun; some of the best moments in my life occurred during those sixteen days. It was also a pretty good way to build my Italian vocabulary back up. I could only hope that I would be able to use it one day. I discovered a few websites that helped me a lot—translate.google.com, of course, but also Reverso.net and LanguageTool.org.

Masks: In the last three quarters of 2020 masks were required virtually everywhere. During the summer it was discovered that the disease was spread by aerosols from exhaling, talking, and singing. Moreover, being indoors greatly increased the probability of transmission. So, it was generally considered acceptable to go outside unmasked, but people were warned to stay at least six feet away from strangers. The last practice was called “social distancing”.

My favorite mask, but the straps tended to break.

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) had a problem. Although they knew that the N95 masks that had been approved for use by NIOSH for painters and others who were often exposed to aerosols were by far the most effective, their official announcements said that people did not need them. Instead they recommended that any type of face covering would work just as well. So, a lot of people made their own masks or even wore bandannas across the lower half of their faces like outlaws in westerns. Others, such as I, purchased ten cheap cotton masks made by Hanes that could easily be washed.

There was a good reason for this deliberate misinformation campaign. A shortage of N95 masks was feared, and it was considered critically important that the best protection (and tightly fitting N95 masks offered much better protection) be available to those who dealt with known COVID patients or with large numbers of people in situations that precluded “social distancing”.

For some people masks, especially the ones that worked the best, were very uncomfortable. They did not bother me much at all. I was, however, quite happy when, during the summer, it became apparent that masks were not necessary outdoors. Still, when I took walks I made certain to keep at least six feet away from other walkers whenever possible.

Health: I was never healthier than in 2020. I experienced no significant ailments at all—not even a cold or indigestion. That pain in my foot bothered me a bit, and on one occasion the nail on my left little finger got bent back and eventually fell off. On the other hand, I was exercising so much that I had to make a shopping trip to Kohl’s to buy a smaller belt to hold up my pants.

My mental state was pretty positive as well. I was able to concoct several interesting projects to occupy my mind when I was not exercising or reading. I would have appreciated a diversion now and then, but most of my life had been good preparation for an extended lockdown. I had a lot of experience at keeping myself occupied.

Sue was also pretty healthy physically, but she got winded very easily. Moreover, she has always been a much more social animal than I was. The strain of the isolation on her spirit was quite evident.

We took a couple of short trips just to get out of the house. At some point in June or July we drove down to Gillette Castle and had a little picnic. We found a spot that was shady and isolated. The walk from the parking lot to our site was uphill, and it definitely wore Sue out. After lunch I took a hike up to the castle by myself. Only a few people were there, and I kept my distance from all of them. This was a very simple outing, but it felt like a small taste of freedom. Perhaps prisoners have the same feeling the first time that they are allowed into the exercise yard.

On September 24, when it finally appeared that the Pandemic had abated a bit, we made a road trip to Roger Williams Zoo in Providence. The highlight for me was when we went to see the sloths. I got to show the attendant there that I was wearing a tee shirt with a sloth on it. Sue had bought it for me in Costa Rica.⁸

On the way back to Enfield we made a stop in Willimantic so that Sue could show me the Shaboo Stage, an outdoor venue that she had frequented to watch local musical performers, mostly blues bands. Sue was friendly with several of these people, and she was very worried for them. The lockdown had eliminated their primary source of income.

We made a third stop at Oliver’s Dairy Bar where we ordered burgers and listened—in our cars—to Bruce John singing and playing his guitar. A few people got out of their cars and danced. It was all a little weird, but it was something to do. Sue had claimed that the food would be very good, but we were both disappointed in it.

People our age were terrified to be among strangers, and reasonably so. Not everyone survived that first year. I did not hear of anyone who died directly from COVID-19, but all of the following members of the debate community died in 2020:

Max Horton, whom I knew quite well from the Simsbury Bridge Club.
David Waltz, whose wife I knew from Tuesday evenings at the Hartford Bridge Club and at tournaments. The three of us even went out to dinner one evening in Hyannis, MA.
Elaine Jaworowski, who was a regular player at the HBC morning games.
Gladys Feigenbaum, who only played occasionally at the HBC and did not seem to be in great health before the lockdown. I did not know her well.

Victor (blue shirt) with Lew Gamerman, Kate McCallum, and Sheila Gabay after a victory in 2019.

The most shocking news was the murder of Grand Life Master Victor King in his own home in Hartford on July 26. He was a very popular player and, to all appearances, had no enemies. His assailant was also his tenant. I had played against Victor a few times and I had talked with him about a few matters concerning the district’s website. At the time the incident was covered in local and national outlets as well as abroad. I was not able to find any information about the disposition of the case.

On July 23 my occasional bridge partner, boss, and good friend Bob Bertoni was operated on for the second or third time in recent years. He recovered enough to continue working as the District Director for the rest of the year, but I think that everyone knew that the handwriting was on the wall.

Sue’s friend and occasional bridge partner, Ginny Basch, also went into the hospital in July. A few days after she had been released she needed to return and have a heart valve inserted. She seemed to recover well enough after that.

On November 16 we learned that Tyesha Henry, Sue’s long-time protégée, had COVID-19. Sue had been with her in an automobile on November 6, but Sue did not develop any symptoms. She dodged a bullet.

Food:Few restaurants were open, and those that were provided only delivery and pickup orders. Most of the time Sue and I ate at home. I continued going to the grocery store, but I always wore a mask (as did nearly everyone else), and I always used the automated checkouts. I seldom was within ten feet of another human. Sue usually ordered groceries online and drove to the store to pick them up.

The hybrid Yum restaurant in E. Windsor.

We ordered pizza perhaps once a month, and we drove to KFC three times⁷, once in West Springfield and twice in East Windsor. The first drive to East Windsor, which was probably in May, was very strange. There were almost no cars on any of the roads, but there was a long line at the drive-through window at the KFC/Taco Bell restaurant. I did not get my order until twenty-five minutes after my arrival. When I arrived home we discovered that the bags contained both our $20 fill-up and someone else’s Taco Bell order.

On July 18 Sue and I drove over to the beautiful house of Ken and Lori Leopold in Avon, CT. We were originally planning to go to a restaurant for supper, but the negotiations between Lori and Sue for a suitable place with outdoor seating broke down. We enjoyed a very nice supper and then played a few rubbers of bridge. I played with Sue and then Ken. Lori had never played rubber bridge before! That was the only time in the last nine and a half months of 2020 that we dined indoors with other people.

Sue and I celebrated all of the holidays alone together in our house. That was what one did in The (first) Worst Year Ever.

The Neighborhood: The big news was that in the spring the family that lived diagonally across the street from us (“cattywampus” as my Grandmom Cernech would have said) on the southwest corner of North St. and Allen Pl. unceremoniously moved away. This was the family with several trucks and an ATV that the kids rode around on. The father often flew the “Don’t tread on me” flag and other right-wing banners on their flagpole.

The house (a small ranch house with one garage) and yard were both in bad shape when the family abandoned them. Workers spent weeks getting it back in marketable condition. It was auctioned off; no “For Sale” side ever appeared. It was purchased by a woman who has kept it in immaculate conditioned. She even resuscitated the lawn.

The flagpole has never been used since the other family left.

Three doors to the west of them the “patriotic” cause was taken up by a couple. She grew sunflowers accompanied by Bag-a-Bugs and had a statue of an owl that turned its head occasionally. I scoffed at the former and was enthralled by the latter.

He was another kettle of fish. He also had a flagpole. He flew the “Don’t tread on me” flag, but also other flags including a Trump-Pense banner ones about POW/MIAs or respecting the police. Another Trump sign was proudly displayed above the garage. He also had a “concealed carry” sticker on his car’s window. Most bizarrely, he had a fenced-in back yard with red triangular signs on both gates with the word “MINES” on them, as if the back yard contained mines. I took him seriously; he seemed to be retired from both the military and law enforcement, and he was obviously “gung-ho”.

I generally gave these people a wide berth, but my walking took me past their house quite often.

We really only have one next-door neighbor, the residents of 1 Hamilton Court. A couple with children had been living there for quite a few years. He disappeared from the neighborhood at some point before the Pandemic started. A different man moved in and immediately started making over the house and the back yard. I talked to him for a few minutes once. He seemed friendly enough. Anything would be better than his predecessor, who had said he would kill our cats if they ventured onto his property.

This photo was taken from my chair in the office. Giacomo is the one with the long bushy tail.

The Pets: Our two cats, Giacomo and Bob, really enjoyed the lockdown. Sue and I got in the habit of watching television together from 8 p.m. until I could no longer keep my eyes open, which usually occurred between 9:30 and 10. The cats loved the idea that we were both sitting still. Giacomo often sat peacefully on my lap, as he had done for many years. Now, however, the two of them would also sometimes lie together on a blanket that Sue had laid out on the floor. Giacomo seemed to enjoy having a friend. They assumed every position imaginable, including spooning.

Giacomo showing off his thumbs on the bed on November 1.

In October Giacomo surprised me by catching a moth. When he was younger he was a fearsome hunter, but in 2020 that was the only time that he showed much interest in any wildlife.

Sue and I never knew Giacomo’s real birth date, but we celebrated it annually on November 1. 11/1/20 was his seventeenth birthday. When I returned to bed for my first nap of the day I was shocked to find Giacomo had climbed up on the bed. We enjoyed a nap together for the first time in at least a year.

On Christmas Giacomo found a comfortable resting spot. He was left-pawed. Here he is using his business paw to ask for petting.

On August 4^th, the day of a tornado watch, I discovered that at least one of the cats (I suspected Giacomo) had stopped using the ramp in the basement that led to the cat door and had instead designated an area of the newer side of the basement as an open latrine. After I cleaned up the smelly mess I drove to Target and purchased a large litter box and some cheap litter.

The cats quickly adjusted to using the litter box, but they tracked litter all over everywhere. I solved the problem by switching to Clean Paws, which was much more expensive but did not stick the their feet as much.

Friends: Sue had many, but I really only had one friend, Tom Corcoran. He left the Land of Steady Habits shortly after the Pandemic struck and rented an apartment in Burlington, VT, which is where his children lived.

In 2020 we only saw him once in person. On August 1 he was back in his house in Wethersfield to take care of some business, and Sue and I drove to meet him there. Sue brought with her and antique ice box that Tom pledged to fix it up somehow.

We celebrated Tom’s birthday with a Zoom call on October 27. You should be able to calculate his age if you have read these blogs carefully.

Bridge: There was no face-to-face duplicate bridge in 2020 after the middle of March.

Many people played online. The ACBL even set up an arrangement for “virtual clubs” that held online sanctioned games of eighteen boards. I did not participate.

On November 18 District 25’s Executive Committee held a meeting on Zoom. It was depressing. The ACBL was probably going to cancel the NABC in the spring in St. Louis and the one scheduled for Providence, RI, in the July of 2021. Most of the members of the Executive Committee, including me, were also on the committee for the latter event. It was crushing news.

The North American Pairs and Grand National Teams would be contested online. I did not like this news at all, but I asked Ken Leopold, Felix Springer, and Trevor Reeves to play with me, and they all agreed. I told Ken that I would practice as much as I could online. We played online on Christmas Day, but that was the only time in 2020. I hated the experience, but this might be my last chance to play in Flight B of the GNT.

Sports: The National Basketball Association, like all other forms of indoor entertainment, suspended play when the Pandemic hit. In order to salvage part of the 2019-2020 season the league spent $190 to build a “bubble” at Disney World in Orlando, FL. Twenty-two of the league’s thirty teams were invited to the city to play the remaining eight regular season games and the playoffs behind closed doors. Of course, the games were televised.

Yes, they actually played all of the games in Disney World surrounded by pictures of imaginary fans.

This approach worked very well. Everyone involved in the games stayed in the bubble and was tested regularly. No cases at all were reported. The season ended on October 11, with the Los Angeles Lakers crowned as champions. The league generated about $1.5 billion is revenue.

Other sports did not follow the league’s example. The only one that I was interested in was college football. The Big Ten was pressured by Trump into playing the season, sort off. All non-conference games were canceled, and the beginning of play was postponed until October 24. Games were played in empty or nearly empty stadiums.

Michigan was ranked #18 in the preseason and beat #21 Minnesota 49-24 in the opening game. This was followed by three embarrassing losses. In week 5 the Wolverines used a new quarterback, Cade McNamara, to beat Rutgers in three overtimes. In week 6 they lost to Penn State at home. Since all of its remaining games were canceled due to COVID-19 outbreaks, the team ended the season 2-4, the worst record in living memory.

The whole idea of playing during a pandemic was idiotic. The NCAA ended up granting extra eligibility to all of the players.

I guess that sports addicts enjoyed watching the competitions in empty stadiums and arenas. I did not watch any sports at all during the entire year.

Miscellaneous: I filed my income taxes in February. I did not receive my refund until August 1. There were two reasons for this: Most IRS employees were working remotely, and a large number were busy distributing the $1400 stimulus checks that Donald Trump made sure had his name on them. I am not complaining.

The class that I took in Advanced Italian held only nine of its ten classes. The last one was canceled (without a refund) because of COVID-19. I signed up for the fall class, but it was canceled on September 9.

On August 8 we received a check from AIG for the trip insurance for our cruise in March that had been canceled. AIG, the largest company in the trip insurance market, must have taken a real bath in 2020.

I purchased and tried to read a couple of Montalbano novels by Andrea Camilleri. They were difficult for me. The narrative was in standard Italian, but most of the dialogue was in the Sicilian dialect, which is much different.

On August 11 Bank of America refused the automatic payment of the bill for our homeowners’ insurance policy. I had received a new credit card and had not yet changed the number on Travelers’ website. It was resolved in a few days.

Beginning on November 10 we enjoyed almost a week of really beautiful weather. Sue and I drove up to her property in Monson, MA. She wanted to walk up to the top, but she got less than a hundred yards before she was out of breath and exhausted. We rested a few minutes and then walked back to the car.

Desperate for something to do, on November 11 I began polishing up my novel Ben 9, which I have posted here. I just had to do this. It had been inside of me, and I had to let it out. I doubt that anyone will ever read it. Who is interested in reading about the clergy in the eleventh century?

What else? I feel as if I have left out something important that happened in 2020. What was it? Oh, yeah, the election. You can read about it here.

1. I don’t know why all the letters are capitalized. It is not an acronym. The five letters stand for Coronavirus Disease. “Corona” is the Latin word for crown. The -19 was added to indicate that it began in 2019.

2. The results have been posted correctly on the ACBL website in the old format at https://web2.acbl.org/tournaments/results/2020/03/2003505/2003505_20.HTM. However, the Live for Clubs results for that day (https://my.acbl.org/club-results/details/126150) do not even show us participating.

3. I tweeted that I thought that Magpie Murders was the best mystery that I had ever read. Anthony Horowitz thanked me in the comments and wished well to the HBC.

4. The Best Buy in Enfield was a casualty of the Pandemic. The building was still empty two years later.

5. The journal for the Sicily trip is posted here.

6. The English version of that trip can be read here.

7. The excursion to the sloth sanctuary is described here.

8. There once was a KFC in Enfield on Route 5, but the owner retired, and the store closed. Enfield contains almost every other kind of fast food place, but for years no one sold fried chicken until a Popeye’s opened in August of 2022.

The 1948 Project

Posted on July 16, 2021 by Mike

Why and how. Continue reading →

I would have called it: *Mi Chiamo Jack Vance. Ecco la Mia Storia.*

Motivation: The primary inspiration for this monstrous undertaking was Jack Vance’s remarkable autobiography, This is Me, Jack Vance! When the pandemic suddenly endowed me with an unexpected surfeit of leisure time in the spring of 2020, I read many books. One of the best was the Italian version of Vance’s award-winning autobiography. Three things impressed me the most about the man and his work:

Jack Vance was such a cool guy. He did so many interesting things (including cheating on his eye exam to get into the Navy), and he and his wife took truly amazing international vacations.
Vance was tremendously talented, and not just as a writer. Even more impressive was his discipline. He wrote most of his books when he ran out of money on extended vacations! He could sit down in an exotic location and churn out four thousand words a day. His wife typed up his output as fast as he could write it. He evidently sent his second drafts to the publisher, and nearly all were accepted.
He dictated his autobiography when he was in his nineties and BLIND! He must have relied almost entirely on his memory; his friends and colleagues were almost all dead when he started the project.

When it became evident that the pandemic would be around for months, if not years, In June of 2020 I realized that I had been accorded a unique opportunity to attempt a huge project. The idea of trying to document my own life in a thorough manner took root in my imagination. I had often claimed that I had a million good stories. In the beginning my primary objective was to assure that as many of those amusing anecdotes as possible were recorded while I could still remember them. I had no doubt that many people and events had already faded from my memory or morphed into something that no longer resembled reality. Even so, I felt compelled by fate to transcribe as many as possible as accurately as possible.

I started with my Army days. So many utterly bizarre things happened in those eighteen months that I wanted to write about them before more memories became blurred or distorted. My biggest regret in life—bar none—was my failure to keep a journal when I was in the Army. I certainly had plenty of free time. I had no social life; I played golf, but my evenings were almost always free. I even had a typewriter. It just never occurred to me to write about my experiences.

After completing a few blog entries about my heroic stint defending the country, I wrote about my last undergraduate semester at the University of Michigan. This was one very painful entry that I just wanted to get out of the way.

I soon became enchanted with the process of researching and writing. I no longer just wanted to retell humorous anecdotes. I thoroughly enjoyed digging up references to familiar people and events and reliving ancient memories. I set up a timeline in a spreadsheet and gradually filled most of it in. From that point on, I have released entries in a close approximation of chronological order.

The Format: I did not spend much time mulling over how to present the text and images. Wavablog, the collection of my blog entries on Wavada.org that use WordPress, seemed like an obvious choice for such an open-ended project. The other possibility would have been to use the same php¹ format that I developed for my journals and other writings. The biggest advantage of WordPress was its ease of tagging names and other items for cross-referencing. I would have needed to write a lot of code to duplicate this feature.

Some aspects of WordPress annoyed me. Its WYSIWIG format provided no easy way to handle footnotes. I seem to be unable to write without them, and my php functions make them easy. WordPress allows user-defined functions, but I don’t see how they could be used for footnotes.

I never seriously considered changing formats after I started. WordPress was adequate for what I hoped to accomplish.

Sources: Since I had not kept in touch with anyone from my grade school, high school, undergraduate days (except my collegiate debate partner, Bill Davey) at the University of Michigan, or the Army, I had very little to supplement my memory concerning the first twenty-four years of my life.

I certainly wished that I still had my yearbooks from eighth grade and high school. I don’t remember discarding them. It is possible that my mother threw them out when she cleaned out my room while I was in the Army. I know that she threw away my collection of baseball cards, and my saxophone also disappeared. There was not much chance of finding a copy of either of them online. My grade school doesn’t even exist any more. Rockhurst High School is flourishing in 2021, but I could find no trace of the 1966 yearbook on the Internet.

Even so, I think that I remembered the names of most of my fellow students in both my grade school and high school classes. It helped a lot that I took classes with mostly the same people throughout, and we sat in alphabetical order in almost all classes.

Wayne Miller helped me with my debate-coaching days at Michigan, and Scott Harris helped with the Wayne State period. Don Ritzenheim’s dissertation was also a valuable source of information.

I expected to find a great deal of information about the early days of our software company, TSI, by rummaging through our basement. My wife Sue never throws anything away unless it has rotted or is covered with mold. However, my search yielded very little that was of much use. So, either Sue squirreled a lot of files away somewhere else, or I did not investigate all the containers in the basement, large areas of which are virtually impenetrable.

Some of the more impenetrable areas of the basement.

I found on my desktop computer files containing dozens of business emails and my many trip reports from the period of 1999-2009. I also found all of the communication concerning the attempt to sell the business in 2010.

Images: I bought Sue a camera in 1973. She used it a lot for decades. I expected to find a large number of photos (or, even better, CD’s that contained photos) in the basement. I found a couple of albums that she had forgotten about and a few loose photos, but I never located the mother lode.

I used a series of disposable cameras to take a lot of photos of our first trip to Italy in 2003. They have been missing since shortly after the trip. I certainly did not throw them out. They almost certainly were stuffed in an envelope, bag, or box and now languish in a pile of junk somewhere. Also missing are the numerous photos that Sue took of that first big tour that we took.

The missing cable should be to the left of the one shown on the old hard drive that sits atop my desktop computer.

These three failed searches were the biggest disappointments of the whole undertaking. Close behind was my inability to find many electronic photos that I took with my two point-and-shoot cameras from 2005-2009. The files were lost when the hard drive on my laptop crashed. I had hopes that they might be on a very old external drive that for years had been plugged into a USB port on my computer. However, the device had a DC-in interface, but I located no such power cable. Furthermore, the company that marketed the drive in the U.S. for its Chinese manufacturer appeared to be out of business.

The good photos had been removed from the tan envelope shown here and filed before this photo was taken.

The most exciting discovery was an interoffice mail envelope that had been buried on a shelf in my office. They were beneath some three-ring binders and 9″x12″ envelopes that contained items from various trips. The envelope contained hundreds of photos that I had taken with disposable cameras in the late nineties and early two-thousands. About half were shots of employees at TSI’s AdDept clients, and some even had notations on the back identifying the people in the photos by name.

Whenever I found appropriate photos that Sue or I had shot, I used them in the blogs. Otherwise, I often looked on the Internet for whimsical or instructive illustrations. If I used something that I shouldn’t have, I will gladly donate a portion of the profits of this tome to a mutually agreeable charity.

I suspect that a cache of photos of the Wavada family is taking up space somewhere in our house. My family did not take a lot of photographs, but I remember that my mom kept a stack of them in the drawer of a round table in the living room. If I come across any, I will try to integrate them into the appropriate blog entries.

“Where are they now?”: I googled nearly everyone mentioned in any blog entry. If I could find any information about them, I included it, usually in a footnote. I tried to contact a number of friends and acquaintances. Only a few responded, but it gave me great joy to hear from them.

Of course, some of the people that I mentioned have died. The life expectancy of a male born in 1948 is only 73.1 years. If I make it to the end of September 2021, I will be in the upper fifty percentile.

1. My journals and books have been posted using programs that I wrote in php, a scripting language used to produce HTML code. The name of the language is an abbreviation of “personal home page”. It allows someone to produce web pages in almost any format, but getting started with it is not for the faint of heart. It was really designed for people who knew C or C++. I don’t, but it was close enough to BASIC that I managed to teach it to myself with a lot of help from online manuals and fora.

1990 A Memorable Fortnight in Search of Camelot

Posted on June 10, 2021 by Mike

Innocents abroad again. Continue reading →

If I had read *The* *Innocents Abroad*, I might have brought a notebook on the trip to London. I definitely brought at least one to Milwaukee.

In December of 1989 I had won a story contest (described here) held by the Hartford Courant. The prize was a two-week trip for two to England!

I should mention at the outset that neither Sue nor I took any notes on the trip to England. I think that Sue must have brought her camera, but I have not located any of her photos. I definitely took no photos. So, all of the following content was based on our memories, and the photos that are include, with the sole exceptions of the tattered notebook on the right, the shot of Rocky perched on the toilet, and our souvenir coaster, were all taken by others.

I might have made a mistake in the dates, but the schedule worked out so perfectly that my confidence level is rather high, especially considering that the events happened more than thirty-one years ago.

My preparation for my first trip across the Atlantic was, by necessity, greatly inferior to my efforts for our twenty-first century vacations. Research was much more difficult in 1990. The Internet sort of existed, but there was no Google or Wikipedia. We had Cox cable in our house, but Cox did not offer Internet services until the last half of the nineties. Even AOL dial-up was still three years in the future.

Moreover, I had no time to research. The installation of TSI’s AdDept system at Macy’s in New York was entering phase two (as described here), and, at the same time, we were desperate to sign up a second large retailer to use the system that we had worked so hard to develop for Macy’s. TSI was in a rough spot. We no longer had a dedicated marketing person, and we were also quite short on cash.

We obtained a guidebook somehow, probably from the library. Sue and I decided that we wanted to see as many famous sights as possible, but, despite what I had said to Lary Bloom at the Courant, on the way we would also try to investigate some places that were related to the Arthurian legends.

Sue worked with the Jameson Travel people that the Courant had hired to handle the details of trip. The newspaper provided enough money to cover all transportation costs (including auto rental) and lodging. We had to pay for food and anything else that we wanted. Our basic plan was to eat big breakfasts at the hotels and either lunch or supper at a restaurant. The other meal would be snacks that we picked up at whatever store we chanced upon.

We had a pretty good plan with four bases of operation:

London for three nights. Starting with our arrival early in the morning on Thursday, February 22, 1990, and ending with a car rental on Sunday the 25^th.
Wells for three nights with side trips to Glastonbury Tor, Stonehenge, Wookey Hole, and Cadbury Castle. We drove through, or at least very near to, Bath (BAHTH) on the way.
Plymouth for two nights with a side trip to Tintagel (tin TAH gehl) and a stop in Bristol on the way to York to enable Sue to shop for miniatures on her thirty-ninth birthday.
York for three nights with a drive through the Dales and, on the return trip to London, a short stop in Barnsley so that Sue could see Locke Park as well as an afternoon stop in Warwick Castle.
Back to London for two nights. Since we gained five hours flying west, we would arrive in Boston at lunch time or even earlier.

The story of my trip actually begins on a February flight from Bradley not to London but to Chicago. It was an early morning United flight on Monday the 19th. For some reason most of my airplane horror stories have involved flights on United airlines. The one to Chicago, however, was quite uneventful.

From O’Hare I took a cab into town for a meeting at One IBM Plaza with some IBM sales reps who specialized in the retail sector. Some really big retailers had headquarters in Chicago. Sears and Walgreens came to mind. Marshall Fields still had its headquarters in Chicago at that point, too. I tried to explain AdDept to them, but they had trouble understanding it. I am not sure that they even realized that retailers had advertising departments.

From IBM regional headquarters I took a cab to the train station, where I bought a ticket on the next Amtrak train to Milwaukee. The schedule said that it was a ninety-minute journey. Unbeknownst to me, this train happened to be the famous Empire Builder, which went from Chicago all the way to Seattle and Portland. Union Station in Milwaukee was its first stop.

When I boarded my car, it was rather empty. I found a seat by a window, lifted my suitcase up to the overhead rack, and sat down to read.

To my surprise, a man who may have been in his sixties approached me and asked if he could sit next to me. Here was my chance. All that I had to do was to utter the word “No.” I, however, chose politeness. This would be a better story if I had introduced myself and asked the gentleman his name, but I was not that polite.

I didn’t say that it was an express train.

My unexpected companion explained that he and his wife were traveling together to Oakland, CA, to visit their daughter. They liked to take trains, but on long trips like this one they soon tired of each other’s company. So, they each sought out other people to sit with and engage in conversation.

The gentleman was certainly friendly. He asked me where I was getting off and, after I responded, what I was going to do in Milwaukee. Nobody could explain TSI’s unique business in just a few minutes, and my activities that day would seem confusing to anyone. I did my best, and he listened politely.

The cars were a little sleeker, but this was still the Milwaukee Amtrak Station in 1990.

Then, without being asked, he told me that he was from a small town south of Chicago. He may have also worked the price of corn into the conversation at some point as I glanced longingly at the mystery novel balanced on my lap.

Somehow the topic worked its way around to his daughter’s marital status, which was evidently “divorced”. She had moved to the west coast and was living by herself “because, you see, he turned out to be one of them gay fellows.”

Fortunately, this revelation came just as the train was pulling into Milwaukee’s Union Station. Some other passenger would undoubtedly get to hear the rest of the story. Actually, probably several unsuspecting people would be subjected to it. In the cab from the station to my first appointment it occurred to me that the idea of sitting with strangers on the train was probably the wife’s.

My destination in Milwaukee was the office of an ad agency, the name of which I don’t remember. I met there with some people to discuss the possibility of the agency purchasing an AS/400 and running ADB, the version of TSI’s ad agency system designed for that computer, on it. The employees at the agency treated me very nicely and seemed quite interested in what the system had to offer.

At the close of the business day I took another cab to the Mark Plaza Hotel in downtown Milwaukee, which was within walking distance of the Boston Store. P.A. Bergner and Company owned that store and a large number of other department stores in the north-central states. The advertising department for the entire chain was located on one of the top floors of the store.

Before going to bed I called Sue and told her about the two meetings as well as my encounter with the long-distance rail traveler.

At Bergner’s I met with the production manager, Dan Stroman, and the loan room manager, Sheree Marlow Wicklund. Their loan room was much simpler than Macy’s. The merchandise seldom was sent to outside photo studios. One person could really run it without a computer.

We had not written a system for keeping track (called “trafficking”) of the status of the various aspects (copy, layout, art, photography, etc.) of production jobs yet. So, what Dan was interested in was a new area for me. I also met with the finance and newspaper people. More details are here.

In 1990 a small restaurant in the Milwaukee Airport sold these delicious brats.

After an entire day gathering system requirements, I left with a lot of notes in my spiral notebook, a folder full of sample reports, and my suitcase. I took a cab to the airport. I bought two Usinger’s brats for supper, spent a few minutes in the airport’s used book store, which, as I recall, had a set of Goethe’s complete works that was short a couple of volumes.

Nobody made this drive in an hour in the evening on February 13, 1990.

It was snowing lightly when I boarded the plane. My journey home went through Chicago. That first leg was always so short that the seat belt light was never turned off.

We had barely taken off when the pilot announced on the intercom that O’Hare Airport had just closed because of an ice storm. So, the plane was being diverted to the nearest available airport, General Mitchell International Airport, the same one from which we had just departed.

When we had landed, an agent proudly informed us that United had hired buses to transport all the passengers to O’Hare. So, evidently the airport itself was still open, even if all of the runways were closed. I was a little fearful of a bus ride in a storm that was ferocious enough to frighten the airport that was a hub for two of the nation’s largest carriers, but I really needed to get back to Enfield to attend a meeting scheduled for the next day.

The rest of the trip went as smoothly as could be expected. The bus that I was on made it to O’Hare. I had to wait in line to speak with a United agent, but I was then booked on a flight to Hartford that was scheduled to depart early the next morning.

Since the cancellation was due to the airport’s decision, United did not offer to put me up at a hotel. I had no credit cards and too little cash remaining from all of those cab rides to pay for a room on my own. So, I snatched as much sleep as I could in one of the seats that were specifically designed to prevent people from nodding off and missing their flights. I had a lot of company.

For the next two decades I was a regular at Executive Valet Parking.

The flight the next morning left on time and arrived in Hartford on time. I took the shuttle to the airport parking lot, ransomed my car, and then drove back to Enfield.

I arrived at our house a little before noon. I called the office and told them that I would take a shower, grab an hour or so of sleep, eat lunch, and then come into work. I did not sleep much, but otherwise I followed that plan.

In the afternoon a couple from New Jersey appeared at our office. I don’t remember the details of this meeting. I seem to recall that it had something to do with our pitch for Paramount, which is described here. These people had experience with UNIX, the operating system preferred by Paramount. “UNIX” had always been sort of a dirty word in our office.

After they left I formalized my notes from my three meetings in Chicago and Milwaukee and sent letters to the people with whom I had met. That is what you had to do in the days before email. Because we were scheduled to depart for London the next evening, I left it up to Kate Behart to follow up on the phone with them.

I did not feel hopeful about the meeting in Chicago and the meeting at Bergner’s. The last meeting in our office was just a flyer. On the other hand, my hopes for the ad agency in Milwaukee were pretty high. If someone from the agency called our references, I thought that we could get it. Our clients loved us, and they always praised our work.

After supper I packed. I remember bringing along several books by Jack Vance. Chick Comparetto¹ had volunteered to take care of our cats, Rocky and Woodrow, while we were absent. It was not a weighty responsibility. They had their own door. I had purchased plenty of Cat Chow. If Chick forgot to give them water, they were not shy about helping themselves to the toilet. If they got hungry, Woodrow was adept at ripping open the bag of food. They probably also had two or three survival tricks that I had not yet discovered.

We must have brought either travelers’ checks or a lot of cash on the trip. I am quite sure that we had no credit cards.

Someone drove us to Logan. I have a vague recollection that it might have been Sue’s sister Betty.

I remember nothing about the experience in the airport in Boston. Our plane did not leave until late in the evening. We must have eaten something in the airport, but it was not memorable.

We lost five hours in the flight across the Atlantic, and so it was rather early in the morning when we landed at Heathrow. We had no trouble with our luggage or with customs. That aspect of travel was much easier in those days.

We also had no difficulty finding the driver who had been hired to meet us. I don’t remember his name or what he looked like, but I recall him being very welcoming in a reserved, British manner. He asked about the contest, and he recommended that we invest £5 each in the double-decker bus tour of London.

I am pretty sure that the Camelot was somewhere on this map.

He drove us right to the Camelot Hotel², our home for the next three nights. It was located on or near Sussex Place quite near Hyde Park. As soon as we entered the hotel, Sue and I had the same thought: “We are staying at Fawlty Towers!” Manuel was missing, and the details were all different, but the feel was remarkably similar. I suppose that at one time there were small urban hotels run by amateurish entrepreneurs in the United States, but by 1990 they were pretty much extinct.

We had to sign the guest registry, which was a huge book lying open on a desk, not a counter. A television was on behind the desk, and—I am not making this up—an episode of Fawlty Towers was playing.

My recollection is that the hotel comprised eight or ten nondescript rooms.We found ours and unpacked. We were both tired, but adrenaline overpowered the jet lag.

The person at the desk told us where we could catch a double-decker bus. We left our oversized key at the desk, walked to the location described to us, mounted to the second level of a bus, and took the tour. It was, as our driver had promised, a good way to get a feel for the city.

I don’t remember where we ate lunch, but afterwards we took a stroll in Hyde Park. It was very relaxing. I was surprised to see that people still used the Speaker’s Corner as a public pulpit. At some point an interesting thought popped into my head. I looked at my watch and then remarked to Sue, “Do you remember that guy on the train to Milwaukee that I told you about? I just realized that he is still on that same train.”³

That evening we walked a few blocks over to Baker St. I don’t remember what our motivation was originally, but when we arrived there we naturally tried to locate 221B. It didn’t exist. Moreover, there was no 221 at all.

We did find a steakhouse near that location, and, although we knew that the English were not famous for their cuisine, we gave it a try. The restaurant had a sound system that played pop tunes. The one that was playing as we walked through the door was “Baker Street” by Gerry Rafferty, which had been released twelve years earlier. The coincidences on that day were truly unbelievable. The food was OK, and Sue and I had fun trying to name the other songs. “Baker Street” never came up on the sound system again.

I only remember one other restaurant that we patronized in London. It was a Greek restaurant⁴ that was a block or two from the hotel. My recollection is that it was in the basement of some building, but I may be wrong. I distinctly remember that the food was absolutely delicious, by far the best of any of the food that we ate in England. I also remember that there were only two other people in the restaurant. They were seated at a table as far from us as was possible. They seemed to be just chain-smoking, drinking coffee (or something in coffee cups), and speaking in Greek. I struggled to hear a familiar word or phrase, but since the only Greek I knew then was thousands of years out of date, the task was hopeless.

In London we walked and/or took the tube everywhere. I thought that London’s Underground system was wonderful. It was so easy to figure out. I was used to the mass transit systems in New York and Boston. They were both haphazard and uncomfortable by comparison. I even bought a tee shirt advertising the London Underground. Here are things that I remember Sue and me doing in London:

We definitely went to the British museum. I was thrilled to see the real Rosetta Stone there. It was right out where you could touch it. They had lots of other stuff, of course, but the most memorable for me were handwritten lyrics by John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Those were definitely kept in cases where no one could touch them. I also remember the pigeons on the steps. There must have been a thousand of them.
We spent the better part of a day at the Tower of London. I was very impressed by the armory and the Yeoman Warders in their fancy dress. I had no use for the massive collection of shiny rocks, but others stood in line for a chance to adore them. One of the few souvenirs that we bought on the entire trip was the coaster shown on the right.
We walked to Buckingham Palace, but we did not watch the changing of the guard. It was chilly that day. While we were in the vicinity, we went to Westminster Abbey and were a little grossed out that so many people were entombed there. I guess that they have to put the cadavers somewhere. We also saw Parliament, #10 Downing Street, Big Ben, and the Thames.
Sue wanted to visit St. Catherine’s House in London to look up information about some of her ancestors on her mother’s side, the Lockes and Kings. I didn’t go in with her. I don’t remember what I did, but just looking in windows is quite entertaining in London. I think that I might have found a bookstore.
We were very impressed with the retail on Oxford St., which I found much more exciting and dynamic than the stores on Fifth Avenue in New York.
The ducks in the ponds in Hyde Park were very striking. They had complicated and beautiful markings. Neither of us had seen the like, not even in zoos. I also really liked the coots. Their oversized feet impressed me.
From Hyde Park we could see both Kensington Palace, which at the time was the home of the Prince and Princess of Wales, and Royal Albert Hall. We didn’t visit either one. It probably would not be cool for someone from the Colonies just to drop in on Chuck and Di, and we already knew how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall.

We did not find that being a pedestrian in London was too difficult. At the enormous intersections there were usually pedestrian subways. The hardest part for us was remembering to look to our right first when attempting to cross a side street.

On our very last night in England we went to see Agatha Christie’s play, The Mousetrap, at St. Martins Theater. It was very enjoyable. Maybe we should have tried something a little more daring, but I am very happy to say that I viewed this play when it was only in the thirty-eighth year of its record run.

The worst part of our entire trip began when we picked up the rental car. I think that the travel agency provided us with transportation to the car rental agency. It was only then that Sue revealed that she had specified a standard transmission car, and she was afraid to try to drive it. So, I needed to learn how to shift with my left hand on a perilous journey from the very heart of London to the M4 during the morning rush hour.

I made many mistakes. Other motorists even honked at us a few times, probably the only horns that I heard while we were in the U,K. The British seemed more reluctant than their American counterparts to draw attention to bad driving. Embarrassed and frustrated, I did manage to get the car onto the freeway without causing any accidents.

A little west of Reading Sue suddenly announced, “There he is! I just saw a bear!”

Intent on my driving, I dared not gawk. I took a quick peek in the direction that she pointed. I saw nothing. At the time I did not know that bears had been extinct in England for fifteen hundred years. It probably was just an ordinary Bigfoot.

We took the M4 almost all the way to Bristol. Driving on the M roads in England was no more challenging than driving on interstates in the U.S. However, when we exited from the M4, the rest of the drive was on the A roads, which were very narrow by American standards. I remember that when we drove through the outskirts of Bath I was fearful of scraping against the stone walls that formed the border of the road. Fortunately, we encountered very few cars coming in the opposite direction. When we finally reached our destination in Wells, I was happy that the trip was over and more than a little anxious about the next nine days on the road.

In Wells we stayed at the Red Lion Hotel, which is described here. I think that the building at some point was converted to other uses. I remember that our room had a four-poster bed. I had seen them in movies, but I don’t think that I had ever slept in one.

We spent the rest of that first day in Wells exploring the town. The focus of attention was definitely the huge Gothic cathedral that is dedicated to St. Andrew the apostle. Although it is now the see of the Anglican Bishop of Bath and Wells, it was constructed in the late middle ages when England was a Catholic country. It seemed totally out of place. Wells is little more than a village, and the cathedral is actually set apart from the town. I would have expected the town to have grown up around it.

The Bishop’s Palace was equally awesome or perhaps even more so. His Lordship George Carey⁵ evidently was not apprised of the arrival of the esteemed visitors from across the pond. We saw his home from a distance, and we were even treated to the sight of some episcopal long-johns hanging out to dry. However, we were not invited into the palace grounds where, according to Wikipedia, croquet games are rather common. I would have loved to hear someone explain the rules of the English version of the game.

A word about the weather: Although all of England is well north of New England, the weather in late February and early March was much nicer than what New Englanders would expect. It seemed more like mid-April. Flowers were out, and the grass was green. We wore jackets every day, but we were seldom cold. We also were lucky not to encounter much rain.

For me the most interesting feature in the town of Wells was the memorial on the sidewalk to Mary Rand, a resident of Wells who won the gold medal in the women’s long jump in the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo. The plaque measured out the exact distance that she jumped.

What I remember most about those days was the driving. No matter which of us was at the wheel, both of us became irritable. For some reason the roundabouts gave us the most difficulty. It was bad enough to have to remember to go clockwise. The big problem, however, was the signage. The highway numbers were seldom provided at the exits. Instead a sign displayed the name a town that was somewhere on that section of road. This was, I am sure, useful for people who knew where all of those towns were, but they did not help us at all. Furthermore, it seemed as if at least half the time the name on the sign was “Taunton”, and visiting Taunton was not on our agenda

I am not sure where we went on which days, but I am sure that we went to all of the following places:

Our guidebook described a place called “Cadbury Castle”. It was supposedly someone’s idea of where Camelot (or maybe Camalet) was. We had a lot of trouble finding it. Finally we came upon the village of North Cadbury. We asked someone at a pub where Cadbury Castle was, and they directed us down a one-lane road that was actually just two tracks. Those were the last humans that we encountered on this adventure.

We went as far as we could by car. We stopped the vehicle, locked it, and set off on foot.

Ahead of us were two troughs, a lot of thick underbrush, and a formidable grassy mound. We made our way through the underbrush for thirty or forty yards. Sue got attacked by stinging nettles and was forced to retreat in agony.

In those days if there was a hill in front of me, I climbed it. I made it to the top of this so-called “hillfort”, but I saw no trace of a fort. On the top of the hill a dozen or so cows were peacefully grazing. They ignored me. I could also see Glastonbury Tor in the distance. That was something, I guess.

To be fair, I should add that the sun was out. The legend is that on a misty day you can see the Once and Future King and his famous knights.

When we arrived back at the hotel, Sue asked someone what to take for stinging nettles. They informed us that the best treatment was a plant called “dock”, which always grew near the nettles. That was not in our guidebook.

We also drove to Glastonbury Tor, another ancient hill in Somerset. A lot of people think that this is a magical place. it certainly has an unusual shape. Evidently in the middle ages a monastery was there. Legends abound about it being associated with King Arthur, but there is a dearth of evidence.

A paved path now leads to the tower atop the tor. I don’t think that it existed in 1990.

I don’t remember a lot about our visit here. I don’t clearly recall the tower at the top of the hill at all. Therefore, I was skeptical as to whether I climbed to the top. Sue, however, has told me that I did. Evidently I don’t remember the tower because no one was allowed to enter it. Therefore, its distinguishing feature—no roof!—was not visible to me.

Sue also reported that a dozen or so New Agers were busy absorbing Glastonbury’s vibes.

The good thing about it was that the town of Glastonbury was actually fairly easy to find. I can’t say that about most of the other sights in Somerset. We had a devil of a time finding Stonehenge. Surely, there must have been a lot of tourists who wanted to see these big old rocks. Nevertheless, there was precious little signage to indicate their location.

We were not allowed as close to the stones as the people in this photo are.

We did find it, but it was probably the biggest disappointment of the entire trip. At the time no one was allowed to approach, much less touch the stones. I don’t recall that we ever were within one hundred feet of them. I honestly think that we would have gotten more out of a film about the place.

By this time we were getting rather tired of driving around Somerset searching for legendary hills and ancient inanimate objects.

Our last stop in Somerset, however, was delightful. Wookey Hole is a set of caves that are located just a few miles to the northwest of Wells. We knew about the caves from the guidebook, but we were surprised by the fact that there were actually other really enjoyable things to see and do nearby.

The caves were quite interesting. We took a little tour with a local guide. The best part of it was the way that she pronounced Wookey Hole. The first syllable was at least a fifth higher than the rest of the name. Since we had heard no human speech anywhere near any of the other attractions in Somerset, it was nice to have someone explain the geology of the caves.

In addition to the natural formations, someone had constructed a small museum⁶ that emphasized a few diverse elements of the culture in and around Wookey Hole.

The paper-making demonstration was the most educational. Until then I had absolutely no idea how trees and rags were turned into paper. The penny arcade machines were also something that I had never seen before. Visitors could even play the games using old-school pennies that they could buy there. The carousel section had complete carousels (going clockwise, of course), as well as stunning individual statues. I remember seeing a beautiful lion, but I was unable to find a picture of it on the Internet.

Sue and I found our visit to Wookey Hole both fun and relaxing. We then undertook the drive up to Cheddar Gorge. I am not sure why we did not stop here. Sue absolutely loves cheese. In retrospect I have trouble understanding how she could have resisted the temptation to stop and sample one of her favorite cheeses.

Our next destination was Plymouth, which is a genuine city on the south coast. On the way there we took a slight detour to drive through Exmoor, which includes some really diverse and beautiful areas.

Our hotel in Plymouth was not as memorable as the first two. I have a vague recollection that it also had a restaurant. We took a short pedestrian tour of the city, mostly so we could say that we had seen the spot from which the Pilgrims departed.

I remember that at the restaurant I was served some Devon Cream. I had never had this before and remarked about it to Sue. My face must have registered disgust because the waiter rushed over to ask me if there was something wrong. This, by the way, never happens to me in the U.S.

The main reason that Sue and I bothered to come this far west was to have somewhere to stay while we ventured to Tintagel, the ruins of a real castle in Cornwall on the Atlantic coast.

Tintagel⁷ was definitely worth visiting. However, it was a difficult drive from any direction. Furthermore, a fairly long walk was (and evidently still is) required to reach the ruins from the parking lot. We went there in February, and a very cold wind was blowing in off the Atlantic. We did not get as much out of this experience as we might have if the weather had been nicer or we (i.e., Sue) had been in better condition. We did get a look at the castle ruins and Merlin’s cave. The view of the ocean was stunning.

I am not sure about this, but I think that we decided not to drive directly back to Plymouth. Instead we headed to Barnstaple, a city with which we were familiar from playing the British Rails game. All of the cities in this section are at the base of a very high cliff. This accounts for the peculiar fact that all of the rivers flow to the south.

On Sue’s birthday we left from Plymouth with the intention of reaching York by supper time. I asked Sue what she wanted for her birthday. She said that she wanted to shop for miniatures at a store she knew about in Bristol. So, that is what we decided to do.

Somehow we came up with an unusual plan. We drove to a location on the outskirts of Bristol, which in 1990 had about 400,000 inhabitants. We parked the car and took a city bus downtown. Sue somehow knew which bus to take and the stop at which we needed to exit. When we got off of the bus, Sue looked around but could not see any familiar buildings or street names.

She did find a Dr. Who-type phone box (not booth in England). Somehow she figured out how to make it work. She called the store. The woman who answered asked her what she could see from the phone box. Sue told her. The woman merely said two words: “Turn around.”

Sure enough, Sue found herself looking at the miniatures store. She went in; I did not. I had enough trouble—even at that age—dealing with full-sized objects. While Sue was shopping for tiny things, I walked around and looked in windows. If I discovered a store that sold books or games, I probably went inside. I don’t think that I bought anything, but Sue definitely did. Good! It was her birthday.

We somehow caught another bus that brought us back to the car park. We fired up our vehicle and easily found our way back to the M5. Sue received one more present. We got off of the throughway at Cheltenham and drove through the Cotswold country to Bourton-on-the-Water the home of the Model Village. It took about half an hour.

I think that this is the model, not the real village.

I probably would not have made this side trip if I had been by myself. However, Sue has always felt a special attachment to the Cotswolds and particularly its thatched roofs. The Model Village itself is definitely worth seeing once. It was a nearly exact replica of the real Bourton-on-the-Water within which it resides. What I found the most interesting was that the model itself is indeed modeled at the same one-ninth scale. I naturally wondered if that model included a one-eighty-first model of the model and so on. I mean, some people write on grains of rice; what is the limit?

My attitude might help explain why, although everyone likes working with me, nobody ever asks me to go anywhere with them.

The remainder of the trip to York was uneventful. We stayed for three nights at the Royal York Hotel, a huge very old hotel near the train station. In one way I was glad that we did not go any further north. The people in the north spoke perfect English, of course, but the accent was so strong that it was difficult to understand.

The other memorable supper that we ate might have been our first night in York. I don’t remember the rest of my order, but the vegetable was broccoli. It had been cooked so long that it had turned grey. The waiter, who had emigrated from Greece, noticed my horror. He told me that the English always overcooked the vegetables. I conversed with him a little. I told him that I had taken ten semesters of Homeric and Attic Greek in high school and college. He did not seem too impressed. He probably knew that these classes would not have helped me understand him. I later learned that while modern Greek grammar has not changed much through the millennia, the vocabulary and pronunciation had evolved drastically.

I think that Sue let me do most of my exploring of York on my own. While I was out walking around the city I think that she visited the Railway Museum, which was very near the hotel.

I never pass up a chance to walk the walls of a city. York’s were probably the best.

I remember visiting the stunning York Minster, which was awesome both inside and out. It must surely be the most impressive church in England. I am quite certain that I climbed as high as they allowed in the ancient cathedral. The view of the city and the countryside was breathtaking.

I also walked around atop the ancient stone walls of the city. I cannot remember whether I made it all the way around, but I recall thoroughly enjoying this experience.

York was such a delightful old city. It was very pleasant to experience it both from street-level and from above.

Sue and I definitely visited the Jorvik Viking Center⁸ together. This museum emphasized the history of the area before the arrival of the Normans in the eleventh century. Many lifelike displays depicted the lifestyles of the Vikings who inhabited the area. The details were based on archeological excavations that produced thousands of objects.

We also went for a drive in the Yorkshire Dales that we knew from the television series All Creatures Great and Small. We stopped at a house or store for some reason. We talked with a lady there who used the word “fortnight”. I told her that no one in America ever used the word. She asked me what Americans said instead. She seemed mildly surprised when I replied “two weeks”.

After we left York we made two stops on our way back to the Camelot Hotel in London. The first was in Barnsley, where we searched for Locke Park, named after one of Sue’s relatives, a railroad magnate named Joseph Locke. We stopped to ask for directions. We were told that it was at the corner of Locke and Park. Where else? Sue is not a direct descendant, however. Joseph and his wife Phoebe had only one child, whom they adopted.

Our second stop was at the fabulous Warwick Castle. This stop was recommended by one of TSI’s clients, Mary Lee Pointe at Avon Old Farms School. I had mentioned to her that we were going to England and wanted to see at least one castle. She said that sh had visited several of them, and Warwick Castle was the most interesting.

The castle and its grounds made a fitting end to our motoring excursions. I cannot imagine a more awe-inspiring setting that was matched by the opulent displays in the interior. As I recall, we had a picnic lunch together on the grounds.

We made a memorable pit stop on the way to London. The facilities themselves were mediocre at best. What got my attention was a sign at the entrance demanding “NO FOOTBALL COACHES.” A “coach” to Brits was a tour bus. “Football” referred to the game called soccer in the states. So, the rest area actually prohibited busloads of soccer hooligans.

We managed to locate the car rental agency in London. I don’t remember how we got ourselves and our luggage to the hotel for the last two nights.

I don’t remember which of the activities that I listed in the first London section were actually performed on our last full day in London. I am pretty sure, however, that, as I mentioned, Sue and I attended the theater on our very last evening.

“Memorable” is definitely the right word for this”‘fortnight” in England. I can hardly believe how many things we did and how vividly they have remained in my memory and Sue’s—with no notes at all. How times have changed! It is now a titanic struggle for both Sue and me to recall what we did the day before yesterday.

One thing that I cannot remember clearly is what we did about the business. In the course of the two weeks, we must have called the office at least four or five times. I cannot recall needing to deal with any pressing problems.

1, Chick Comparetto was the father of Sue’s first husband. He lived less than a mile from us. He died in 2020. His obituary is here.

2. Alas, there is no longer a Camelot Hotel in London, and I was not able to identify any hotels that might be successors. Perhaps the building was converted to some other use.

3. This is my favorite shaggy-dog story of all time, and it is 100 percent true.

4. I think that this restaurant might still be in business in 2021. A restaurant called Halepi seems to be in the right location, and everything mentioned on its website, which can be visited here, rings true.

5. His Lordship George Carey became Archbishop of Canterbury, England’s ranking clergyman, in the following year. He retired in 2002. Like most bishops everywhere he got entangled in scandals about reporting clerical sexual abuse. In 2017 he resigned his last formal relationship with the church, which meant that he was no longer allowed to officiated at services.

6. Not many people were at Wookey Hole when we visited. I remember thinking in 1990 that this place needed some good old American marketing. Maybe Ambrose could have helped. Subsequently it has been Disneyfied into a real touristy place. Check out its website here.

7. Tintagel has changed in the three decades since we were there. A visitors’ center has been added, a footbridge has been constructed, and someone was allowed to carve a gigantic image of Merlin’s face on the side of the cliff.

8. The Jorvik Viking Center is still in operation. Its website is here.

Wavablog

Memoirs, bridge, popes, travel, and other stuff

Tag Archives: Vance, Jack

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1990 A Memorable Fortnight in Search of Camelot